Chicken tikka masala is delicious. Al Copeland helped us understand how much better the world could be if someone developed and sold us more delicious food. Ali Ahmed Aslam may not really have invented chicken tikka masala, just as Al Copeland did not invent spicy fried chicken. And the fact that chicken tikka masala drew influences from South Asia but really came out of Glasgow no more detracts from how wonderful it is than the fact that Al Copeland’s spicy chicken drew influences from black Louisiana cuisine but really came from a boisterous white businessman. No one “owns” culture or ..read more

(Guest post by Greg Forster) As world events are reminding us right now, nothing is more appealing to us – to all of us – than a really compelling story. The stories we tell ourselves shape the inner world that we mentally live in, and in doing so, ultimately shape not only who we are as individuals but the social world we live in together. No service is more valuable to the world than that of getting our stories straight. A while back I stumbled across the amazing story of Richard Montañez. The moment I read it, I immediately put him down on my list of future Al nominees. And pretty high on ..read more

As elite universities are over-run with mobs of modern-day brown-shirts praising mass slaughter, rape, and kidnapping, I would like to offer a variant on William F. Buckley’s quip that he “would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.” I would rather be ruled by Chad Kroeger, JT Parr, and their crew than the graduates of elite universities. For a long time, a dozen highly selective universities prepared a large proportion of the people who held powerful positions in government, business, and culture. That era is coming to ..read more

(Guest post by Greg Forster) The delight of good food and the justice of political liberalism – what could be more Al-worthy? And Ali Ahmed Aslam’s achievement reminds us why the two are connected. The Al has a long relationship with good food. From the original Al himself to Steve Henson, Thibaut Scholasch & Sebastien Payen, Tim & Carrie League, Adam Butler & Autumn Thomasson, Mildred Day, Joseph Friedman and John and Justine Glaser, people who create food and make it more widely available to all are among the most frequent Al nominees. It’s not hard to see wh ..read more

Guest Post by Matthew H. Lee This year has been a veritable festschrift for J. Gresham Machen. And appropriately so, as 2023 marks the centennial of what is widely considered his magnum opus, Christianity and Liberalism. Originally published in 1923, Machen wrote Christianity and Liberalism in response to a rising tide of theological liberalism and modernism in the United States. Machen’s views ultimately led him out of his denomination and out of Princeton Seminary, both of which accepted more liberal and modernist tendencies, and led him to help found two enduring institutions—Westminster Th ..read more

(Guest post by Greg Forster) Well, this year we will hand out our sixteenth annual Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year Award. It’s an honor that’s old enough to drive! And it’s the only thing not driving us insane these days. Don’t like the choices the world is offering you? Turn to The Al for uplifting alternatives! Yes, it’s time for The Al – and just to be completely clear, that’s not “Al” as in AI, it’s “Al” as in Al! That’s right, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded, so it is time once again to honor those who have bettered the human condition with the Al Copeland Humanitarian of the ..read more

(Guest post by Greg Forster) Well, this year we will hand out our sixteenth annual Al Copeland Humanitarian of the Year Award. It’s an honor that’s old enough to drive! And it’s the only thing not driving us insane these days. Don’t like the choices the world is offering you? Turn to The Al for uplifting alternatives! Yes, it’s time for The Al – and just to be completely clear, that’s not “Al” as in AI, it’s “Al” as in Al! That’s right, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded, so it is time once again to honor those who have bettered the human condition with the Al Copeland Humanitarian of the ..read more

(Guest post by Greg Forster) OCPA carries my article on how it isn’t enough to pass a school choice policy; it’s imperative to help parents and schools get enrolled in the program quickly: It’s essential to take this problem seriously. Getting participation rates up quickly is essential to the political survival of school choice programs. These programs strike right at the heart of a coalition of special interests that profit by exploiting the education monopoly. These interests will do whatever it takes to kill newly created programs. Fortunately, the movement has a lot of experience with ..read more

Those who suffer with PLDD, which The Higgy is meant to (dis)honor, try to boss other people with the delusion that doing so benefits those being bossed around. It doesn’t really matter whether the bossing is based on something true or false. It’s all for a good goal, so that justifies everything. This is probably what Peter Daznak was thinking when he organized a group letter of public health experts to The Lancet in February 2020 asserting that considering the possibility that Covid originated from a lab leak was dangerous conspiracy thinking and needed to be squashed. As Matt noted in his ..read more

(Guest post by Matthew Ladner) On February 19, 2020 a group of 27 public health officials published a joint letter in the medical journal Lancet that read in part: The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and the ..read more